The Man Group, the sponsor of the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction, recently announced it will award the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. The new biennial prize, worth £60,000 (approximately $110,000) will be given to a living author "who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language."

Unlike the Man Booker Prize, which is given for the best novel published in the current year and is open only to writers from the British Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland, the Man Booker International Prize will be given for a body of work by a fiction writer living in any country.

The judges—literary critic John Carey and two others to be announced shortly—will choose a shortlist of 15 writers for the inaugural prize in early 2005.